FREE* ACCESS: WWI Records, 9th-12th November

For Remembrance Weekend, we feel that everyone should have the chance to discover the war heroes in their family. That’s why we’ve made our most popular military records free* for everyone to use, from 9th-12th November.

The free* collections are our World War I Service, Pension and Medal Index Cards. These are especially useful for three huge reasons:

1) Between them they cover just about every soldier in the British Army during WWI

2) They provide an incredible level of detail about these remarkable heroes, particularly the Service and Pension Records.

3) Everyone should all be able to find a relative somewhere within them.

Millions of young men from all over Britain signed up to fight in WWI. Every family in the country was affected – so if you don’t have a hero in your tree it just means you haven’t found them yet. So here’s your chance!

Try searching for any male relative who could have been aged between 14 and 40 around 1914. Then look for results labelled Service or Pension Records. They provide personal information like address and next of kin, which you can use to check you have the right person.

The Service and Pension Records also reveal your relatives’ ranks and regiments, the different places they fought, and their regimental numbers. You can use these details to spot them in the Medal Index Cards, and discover the different awards they earned. Perhaps the medal is still kept in your family somewhere?

About Emma

Emma Pulman is a Social Media and digital Marketing Executive for Ancestry.co.uk. Based in Ancestry's London office in Hammersmith, Emma regularly tweets and posts on Ancestry's Facebook page.

2 Comments

Lucy Lastic

Once again the paying members will be unable to do any research due to your servers being inundated with all the free loaders who will glue their a*** to the seat and not move until they have dowloaded every record that just might be relevant to them.

9 November 2012 at 9:50 am

David

It is not true that everybody signed up to serve, in 1915 they were conscripted or as Americans would say they were drafted. Men older than 40 served in the war and you seem to have forgotten that women volunteered as well!.